Sebastian Rotella, a senior reporter at ProPublica and author of "How a Chinese-American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels" was recently on the Federal Newswire China Desk Podcast to discuss how the Chinese pharmaceutical industry works with Mexican drug cartels to bring fentanyl into the United States.
Rotella's reporting found Chinese criminal organizations launder money for the Mexican drug cartels who are smuggling illicit drugs through the U.S. southern border. The distribution and use of fentanyl in the U.S. has grown significantly with overdoses from fentanyl increasing.
"Fentanyl has been the most prosperous and lethal new drug to emerge and ravage the United States in the past decade," Rotella said. "Obviously, fentanyl and its precursors are made largely in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and until 2019, legally so. There were some curbs on actual fentanyl, but the precursors still made their way through Mexico until that crackdown in 2019."
According to Rotella, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry is largely responsible for the manufacture and sale of fentanyl. Chinese "alliances" with Mexican drug cartels fuel the industry and opioid crisis in America. Americans can purchase the drug on the internet where it can be shipped in a FedEx package. Rotella's investigation into the money laundering scheme between China and Mexican cartels found that most of the cartels now deal with fentanyl because "it's so much more prosperous and so much easier to smuggle." Rotella also mentioned how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is directly connected to this scheme with "at least a passive, if not active role, of the Chinese state in letting this happen."
“Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered," said Anne Milgram, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 106,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, which is more than double the number of people that died in 2015 (52,404).
Fentanyl is being smuggled mainly through the U.S.-Mexico border, with 90% of some 80,000 opioid-related deaths due to fentanyl in 2021, CBS News reported. Mexican drug cartels have ramped up the flow of fentanyl into an industry that brings the drugs at the border and into the U.S.
"The vast, vast majority is sought to be smuggled through the ports of entry and tractor-trailer trucks and passenger vehicles," said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a hearing in February.
CBS News reported that in 2022, the DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every American. From 2019-2021, annual deaths due to fentanyl overdose nearly doubled. Homeland Security tracks down Mexican cartels that are largely responsible for smuggling the drugs, but the cartels have links to China where production takes place.
"They have the contacts to China and then furthermore, the distribution networks to get things across the United States, the smuggling networks," one official said.
